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Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its Fiscal Year 2025 Labor HHS Education and Department of Defense spending bills.
Overall, the Labor HHS Education bill represents a significant funding upgrade from the House Appropriations Committee’s version. Where the House bill proposed to cut approximately $11.1 billion from the Department of Education’s budget and eliminate 17 programs, the Senate bill would actually increase the Department’s funding by more than $900 million and retain all programs.
For language education, the news in the Labor HHS Education bill was largely positive:
Title III, English Language Acquisition, received a $5 million increase in the Senate bill, a significant victory considering the House proposed to eliminate all funds for it.
Title IV-A, the flexible block grant that some districts use for language education programs, was accorded a $10 million increase over last year, which is the same that it received in the House bill.
Title II-A, the professional development grant program that the House also proposed to eliminate, received level funding in the Senate bill.
Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which sustained a more than $4 million cut in the House bill, was level funded in the Senate bill.
Indian Education, Native Hawaiian Education, Alaska Native Education, and Native American Language Resource Center were all flat-funded.
The Committee also offered its support of “initiatives to build multilingual teacher pipelines through Grow-Your-Own initiatives and provide professional development in multilingual education for existing school staff and teachers” and “efforts for post-secondary fellowships to bolster the multilingual educator pipeline.”
Unfortunately, the Department of Defense’s FY25 spending bill, included only $10 million for the World Language Advancement and Readiness Grant Program (WLARP). While this is the same level as last year, it is still $5 million less than the House FY25 Defense spending bill included and $5 million less than FY23’s final appropriated level. JNCL-NCLIS will continue to work to show Congress WLARP’s value and restore the program to its $15 million funding level.
Congress is now in recess until September. When it returns, it will have very few days left to legislate before recessing for the election. It is anticipated that Congress will pass a Continuing Resolution, a temporary budget measure, to keep the government operating from October 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, until December.
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